After the annual meeting ends, the end of the year will come. This year, Zhang Ran does not plan to celebrate the New Year in China. There are too many people coming to pay New Year's greetings during the New Year in China. There are too many relatives, Zhang Ran's students, and even local officials. Now Zhang Ran has children and doesn't want to be so tired, so he took his whole family to Lanai Island to hide from leisure.

Influenced by Bergman, Zhang Ran also built a private cinema on Lanai Island. During the Spring Festival, Zhang Ran's private cinema was open to residents of the island, showing three movies every day, one in the morning, noon and evening. In addition to screening the latest American movies, it also screens the popular "Jingjue Ancient City" and "The Great Trouble of Heaven" that are currently being screened in China.

Zhang Ran's family praised "The Ancient City of Jingjue", thinking that the movie was completely Hollywood level and was excellent in all aspects; and after watching "The Great Trouble of Heaven", everyone complained and said that what was filmed was like. In everyone's mind, Sun Wukong was an arrogant and unruly hero, but he was filmed as a young man. The residents of Lanai Island had never watched "Journey to the West" and did not know that Sun Wukong was quite happy.

During this week, 11 new films were released in China, including the magical blockbuster "Jingjue Ancient City", "Magic Fighting in the Heavenly Palace", the sitcom "Macau Storm", the parent-child theme "Where Are We Going, Dad", and the animated film "Pleasant Goat", etc., which can be said to be a very fierce period of competition.

In the last life, "The Great Trouble in Heaven" achieved a box office of more than 1 billion yuan, "Macau Storm" achieved a box office of 520 million yuan, and "Where Are We Going, Dad" became a big dark horse, achieving a box office of 700 million yuan, and triggering discussions on whether variety shows are movies. But the reputation of these movies is worse than that of the other, so some viewers said that the Spring Festival is a concentration camp for bad movies.

However, this time the situation changed a lot. "Jingjue Ancient City" crushed a lot of bad movies with its wonderful stories, excellent special effects and excellent production. During the seven days of the Spring Festival, "Jingjue Ancient City" was the best-selling champion with a box office of 840 million yuan; "Magic Fighting Heaven" ranked second with a box office of 320 million yuan; "Where Are We Going, Dad" was the big dark horse in the Spring Festival, achieving a box office of 180 million yuan; "Macau Storm" was supported by Wanda Cinema, but in the end it only received a box office of 140 million yuan, ranking fourth.

Zhang Ran was not surprised by this result and knew it would be like this. People often say that Chinese audiences like to watch bad movies, and even some people in the film industry say the same thing. It’s not that we are not afraid of good movies, but that the audience loves to watch bad movies. Zhang Ran thinks this statement is particularly treacherous, and people know nothing about the film market. In recent years, with the development of the economy, more and more Chinese audiences are willing to enter the cinema, so movies have become a necessity during popular schedules. Especially during the Spring Festival, everyone is willing to enter the cinema. However, Hollywood blockbusters are excluded, and the cinemas are basically domestic bad movies, and the audience has no other choice. Of course, high-demand audiences may choose not to watch suspected bad movies, but for most people, entertainment methods such as men, women, young and old, and low expenses are acceptable to watch movies, and they can only choose one from bad movies. Therefore, the audience does not like to watch bad movies, nor does it like bad movies, but there is no better choice.

It would be fine if ordinary people scolded the audience for watching bad movies, but what was ridiculous is that even many filmmakers were scolding each other, which was shameless. You have to cancel the domestic protection month and put Hollywood movies in, and you can see how many viewers have gone to your bad movies. To be honest, if the country really abolished the protection policy, there would be no inspiring people in China who would not even eat rice dumps, and they would only starve to death.

In the period when bad movies are rampant, if a high-quality domestic commercial blockbuster appears, it will definitely be a crushing level. Against the backdrop of bad movies, high-quality domestic blockbusters will have a huge reputation and are even known as a masterpiece. This is how Jiang Wen's "Let the Bullets Fly" is. "Jingjue Ancient City" is very outstanding in all aspects, and it is also first-class in Hollywood. It is naturally nothing strange to crush a lot of domestic bad movies.

The violent performance of "Jingjue Ancient City" stunned the industry. Everyone knows that "Jingjue Ancient City" will have a good box office and is the biggest hit among the box office champions, but no one expected that "Jingjue Ancient City" will be so strong, with one movie topped the box office of 11 other movies.

Many people remember that the result of Yang Qing’s “Exotic” vs. Feng Xiaogang’s “Private Customization” during the New Year’s Eve period was also the same. “Exotic” achieved a box office of 2.2 billion, while Feng Xiaogang’s “Private Customization” only achieved a box office of 350 million. So, everyone lamented that if there were one or two excellent commercial blockbusters in each period, the good days of domestic bad movies would be over!

After the Spring Festival, Zhang Ran did not rush to return to China, but set up a film studio on Lanai Island, with the goal of combining VR technology with movies and exploring the language of VR films. The studio was led by creative director Sashka, who worked at Pixar Studio for 6 years, and directed the short film "Love of Blue Umbrella". In addition, the studio also includes technical directors Max Planck, Edward Sach and other well-known films in the film industry.

After the studio was established, Zhang Ran invited graduates from Asian Films including Lin Yibin, Neil Bromkamp, ​​Ning Hao, and Yang Qing to visit Lanai Island and announced their plans to them. Zhang Ran told Lin Yibin that in the next two years, the studio will invest $100 million to shoot 10 to 20 VR movies, and show everyone the VR glasses developed by Century Peak, a variety of VR cameras, and various VR shooting equipment.

The directors present are relatively young, and many of them are science fiction enthusiasts, and they have a high acceptance of new things like VR movies. After seeing VR equipment and experiencing the super high immersion brought by VR glasses, everyone expressed their desire to try VR movies.

In the next week, Lin Yibin and his team tried to shoot with VR equipment while discussing how to shoot VR movies. VR is completely different from traditional movies. Traditional movie language is basically invalid in VR. During the trial shooting, Lin Yibin and his team tried various movie techniques. Everyone found that except for long shots and inner montages, other movie languages ​​cannot be used. The most troublesome thing is that they cannot edit. Once editing appears, the audience will feel that the character is teleporting like the Flash.

However, this difficult situation not only did not dispel everyone's enthusiasm, but instead aroused everyone's fighting spirit. Many people think that VR is like when the movie was first invented. At that time, film practitioners did not know "push, pull, shake and follow", nor did they have lens language or montage. It was through the efforts of several generations of filmmakers that modern film theory and lens language were determined in the 1960s and 1970s. Since filmmakers in the past could create film language, we can also create a film language belonging to VR!

A week later, Lin Yibin and the others left Lanai Island and conceived their own VR works; and Zhang Ran also began to prepare their own VR movies. As far as the movie language mastered by Zhang Ran and others currently, VR can only shoot long shots. In this case, VR movies should not be too long, and it is more suitable to be within 20 minutes. However, Zhang Ran wanted to try to make a VR feature film, which took between 40 and 60 minutes, which is a huge challenge.

Just as Zhang Ran took care of his children and prepared for the VR movie, VR suddenly became popular around the world.

On the morning of February 19, Sony showed a VR helmet called Dream God at a game developer conference held in San Francisco. This device is specially designed for the P4 console. Unlike other companies' products, it requires a top-level computer to cooperate with it to achieve the effect of the VR device.

At the game developer conference, Sony said that it is most capable of realizing its virtual reality dream. Shouhei Yoshida, head of Sony's video game software department, said: "The appearance of Dream God is similar to Oculus's VR glasses, and can be seamlessly integrated with the PS gamepad, creating an immersive feeling."

A week later, Internet giant Amazon announced that it had reached an acquisition agreement with VR technology company Oculus to acquire Oculus for $2 billion, including $400 million in cash and $1.6 billion in common stock.

Amazon's acquisition of oculus has caused a huge sensation in the industry and has attracted countless attention. You should know that oculus has only been established for less than two years and is now acquired by Amazon for US$2 billion.

Oculus CEO Brendan Ireby said in an interview with the media: "VR is the ultimate platform. In the future, all display terminals can be implemented with VR glasses. For example, if you stretch out a hand and a mobile phone screen appears on it, it can be operated, but the phone is actually displayed through glasses. It's like 20 years ago, you saw a person making a phone call with a big brother, like talking to himself, thinking he was a lunatic. Now it seems normal, and the development of technology will change this understanding."

When talking about his opponent Sony and Century Peak, Brendan Ireby, the 21-year-old, showed confidence and domineering attitude that was inconsistent with his age: "I have never regarded Sony Dream God as a competitor. Sony hopes to be an early promoter of VR devices and hopes to be the first to integrate VR and gaming entertainment. Century Peak is very powerful, Zhang Ran is my idol, but Oculus has the best VR technology and we are not afraid of any competitors. Of course, if they can do it well, I also like to see it. If VR wants to develop, more people need to join."

Sony did not respond to Brendan Ireby's crazy words. But Hastings felt that this was a good opportunity to hype Motorola VR, so he stood up to fight back: "Oculus technology is good and attracts attention in the VR field. However, Motorola has entered the VR field since 2011 and has been developing VR glasses. We have made breakthroughs in technology, and our technology is the most advanced. We will show the prototype at the e3 electronic entertainment exhibition in June this year. I believe that after seeing our prototype, you will understand what real VR technology is!"

Google has been paying attention to the trends of the Century. After Hastings announced that it would display the prototype at the e3 electronic entertainment exhibition, Google quickly announced: "Google will display the VR prototype at the e3 electronic entertainment exhibition. This VR helmet developed by Google can allow more people to experience the fun of VR!"

First, Century Peak sold Motorola's mobile phone business and established VR company; then Sony released VR helmet; now, Amazon acquired an inconspicuous VR company for 2 billion yuan; this was originally eye-catching, and now Google also jumped out to say that it would release VR prototypes, so VR became completely popular. Even giants such as Oracle and Intel could not sit still, and expressed optimism for VR and announced their entry into the VR field.

Technology giants have deployed VR one after another, making developers and investors believe that the VR industry has broad prospects and will become the next trend of the Internet. Investors have begun to spend money in the VR industry frantically, trying to find the next Oculus, and obtain investments with ten or even hundreds of times returns; entrepreneurs who have seen the trend have also begun to pour in frantically.

In just one month, North America added more than 40 new VR startups, eleven of which received angel or a round of investment; ten VR startups were added in China, and five of which received angel investment.
Chapter completed!